Yeah TV Survivor is getting a lot more twist-heavy for stupid reasons.

Maybe make your base level, like "This season is like a pre-HvV seasons," because post-HvV is probably my line where seasons start getting stupid (RI, frequent captaining seasons). Maybe the line is better put at Second Chances, since post-SC seems to have ramped up even further.

On Borobudur: I think it was a really brilliant challenge. Part of the challenge was figuring out your wincon (fun fact: I actually "figured out" the wrong wincon. I went down every possible path because I just happened to find the correct path last. I originally thought you had to go to every person from every other person). If the challenge had a weirder/less obvious wincon, and you had to find it basically by stumbling into it, then I would be like "yeah that was a problem," but I don't think it was onerously hard to figure out "guess shit until it works, diagram what you're doing so as to not do shit multiple times in a row."

On twists: We need to figure this shit out preferably sooner rather than later. Like, it probably just makes sense to just set a scale and people can disagree with the scale on a personal level if they so desire (for example: I think the mafia rules for "normal" are bullshit because roles that require the mod to lie to the players are implicitly bastard, even if they are "common," but I am still very much aware that normal games on MS can have godfathers and that that is part of the standard). Like, this isn't the first game where this has happened (oh hi MLS), and it's probably important as we make more of an effort on a meta-level to run a wide range of types of games to counteract the recent trend towards heavy-twist/bastard.

In post 69, DrumBeats wrote:I thought Borobudur was a frustrating but very interesting challenge. I definitely enjoy the idea of it but my biggest issue with it was that it wasn't clear how we were being judged. As I was playing I had to angleshoot about what would make more sense for the mods to judge it by, number of moves or time. That definitely had an impact on how I played it because I spent extra time trying to optimize my paths with the map that I had of it. I think it was fine for us to go in not knowing it was a maze, but I think we should've known how it was being judged.

yeah, this was bullshit. challenge was weird but fine, lack of judging criteria is a major no-no

Returning players that we aren't told about is kind of bastard. Yeah, some people managed to guess it, but like when Monty was like "I think there are returning players" we were all like "oh no there definitely won't be he's crazy"

In post 164, CuddlyCaucasian wrote:It doesn't help that most pre-merge challenges tend to be designed in a way that a couple people can carry the entire challenge. Usually what gets people voted out on the show is fucking up a challenge single-handedly, but in so many of the ones in MS games, you can abstain from contributing whatsoever and no one will know whether you suck or not

This is a legitimate issue.

It's too hard by MS challenge design to single-handedly lose a challenge. A lot of the challenges are either bouts, or things that individuals can just SUPER hard-carry.